This contest would not be a joke. Shae and Ayt Mada would be making history, no matter the outcome. Social progress, Kekonese-style, Shae mused. Equal opportunity to die by the blade.
She closed her eyes for a minute before getting out of the car. Even when the mind is determined, the body objects vehemently to the possibility of injury and death. Shae’s hands had gone clammy, and there was a tightness in her chest that she tried to alleviate with controlled breaths. She wondered if her thudding pulse was as Perceivable to every nearby Green Bone as it was to her. It occurred to her that her classmates from Belforte Business School in Windton would be horrified and flabbergasted by what she was about to do. Oddly, the thought made her smile.
Tar got out and opened the back door for her and Hilo; the spectators edged forward eagerly but kept a respectful distance from the intimidating presence of No Peak’s leaders as they stepped out onto the lawn. Seconds after their arrival, a long, sleek, silver Stravaconi Monarch pulled up behind the Duchesse. Ayt Mada emerged, along with her Horn and two Fists. Ayt appeared unruffled by the presence of the crowd; she nodded casually toward the Mountain loyalists who called out and saluted her. She was wearing a black tank top and comfortable silk pants with a tied drawstring. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. A pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head. As she walked to the center of the lawn, she removed them and handed them to Nau Suen, who tucked them into the breast pocket of his shirt as if he regularly held on to the Pillar’s sunglasses during duels. Ayt looked as if she were stopping by the event in between running Sixthday errands, except for the fact that she was carrying her thirty-two-inch jade-hilted moon blade slung over one shoulder. All of her jade sat in its usual place, coiled in silver bracelets up both her arms.
The time had come. Shae drew her moon blade and held it out to Hilo. Her brother turned his head to stare across the lawn at Ayt and her people. He turned back slowly, looked down at Shae’s blade, and spat on the white metal for luck. Shae opened her mouth to say something—she was not even sure what—but Hilo dropped his hands onto her shoulders. His grip and aura fell on her like a warm lead vest. Leaning close, he brought his cheek next to hers and whispered into her ear. “Four cars full of our Fists and Fingers are on their way here, to block off the Lo Low Street tunnel and every road out of this place. There are others headed to the Ayt mansion, to the Factory, to half a dozen other Mountain properties in the city.” His voice was soft and chillingly devoid of inflection. “Some blades can’t be cleaned.”
The iciness of Hilo’s words ran down Shae’s back in a wave of abrupt understanding. Unlike her, he had not been awake all night worrying or praying; he’d been making military preparations. If Shae fell under Ayt’s sword, Hilo would not allow their enemies to leave the grounds alive. He would break the immutable law of the clean blade; he would take forbidden vengeance on her killer and plunge the clans, and the entire city, back into all-out war.
Shae was horrified. She was risking her life to clear her name and her clan’s reputation by solving a dispute of personal honor in the old way, the Green Bone way, under the eyes of Old Uncle and in adherence to rules that all Kekonese held as inviolable stricture. Duels were traditionally meant to contain personal feuds and prevent them from escalating into family or clan vendettas. Breaking the pact of the clean blade would be unacceptable; it would put all the fault for the resumption of war squarely on No Peak. Hilo was a Green Bone to his core and the Pillar of the clan; for him to so flagrantly break the moral code they lived by—it would ruin everything. It would make a mockery of the jade warrior honor she was dueling to uphold in the first place.
Before Shae could put any of these thoughts into words, Hilo stepped away from her, his expression dark and unreadable. He turned and walked to the corner where the Maik brothers waited, and Shae was alone in the center of the lawn, save for the impatient red intensity of Ayt Mada, standing across from her, moon blade already drawn, waiting to begin.
Shae scrambled to regain her focus. She wondered for an instant if Hilo was bluffing—if this was his twisted way of motivating her to survive the duel—but she had no time to dwell on the idea. An anticipatory hush had fallen over the crowd; she heard the clicking of camera shutters around her. Innumerable heartbeats were rising in her Perception, loud and seemingly in time with her own, all of them eager and waiting. Standing out from the general multitude were the jade auras of Green Bones from both clans who’d gathered to witness this event, one that was supposedly a matter of personal honor between two people, but that everyone knew was far more than that. Janlooners wanted the clans to hold to the truce, to respect territorial lines and cooperate to combat crime and smuggling and current international pressures, but they had nevertheless come out enthusiastically at a moment’s notice to see blood spilled between the Mountain and No Peak.
Shae faced her opponent and touched the flat of her blade to her forehead in salute. Ayt did the same. Gone was Ayt’s casual demeanor. There was a frightening quality to her stillness now, an almost reptilian poise in the way she stood erect and regarded the younger woman, waiting for her to attack first. In Shae’s acutely sharp Perception, Ayt was a column of red energy, the inside of a coal furnace, its painful heat blotting out everything else. The longer she stared at it in her mind, the more unassailable it would seem; she would lose her nerve. Shae gathered her Strength and rushed in with a burst of speed, moon blade flashing downward in an opening diagonal cross slash aimed at opening Ayt Mada’s torso from left shoulder to opposing hip.
Ayt slid left at the edge of the weapon’s reach, deftly deflected Shae’s next cut, and spun low to the ground, hair whipping around her neck, her extended blade a blur of steel. Shae launched herself Light, barely evading being taken apart at the knees, and came down with a hard chop from above. Ayt braced the blunt backside of her weapon against her left palm as she blocked Shae’s attack head-on. For an instant, white metal rang against white metal, Strength clashed against Strength, the jade auras of the two women vibrated with impact; then Ayt’s blade disengaged, changed direction like the darting tail of a fish, and shot a deadly path to Shae’s throat.
Shae jerked her head out of the way and threw her Steeled arm up in instinctive defense; Ayt’s moon blade sheared against her raised forearm, the razor edge parting skin but stopping short of muscle and bone. With her attention on Ayt’s weapon as it passed inches from her face, Shae nearly failed to Perceive the Channeling blow that Ayt thrust with her left hand. It drove toward Shae’s center like a sharpened metal rod, aiming to punch through heart and lungs.
Shae twisted her torso out of the way, battening herself with Steel, her rib cage shuddering with concentrated jade energy as she sucked in the deadly momentum of Ayt’s energy and countered in blind desperation: a quick, jabbing Channeling strike to the sternum, followed by an unaimed Deflection that nevertheless blasted her opponent in the midsection. Ayt stumbled backward several feet, lips parted in a grimace. Shae saw the Pillar’s eyes widen and her normally perfect composure fissure as the realization struck them both at the same time: Shae stood a chance of winning. In the opening seconds of the duel, anyone could see that Ayt Mada was a superlative jade fighter, a powerful, deliberate combatant, well deserving of her reputation, but Shae was fast and talented and perhaps most importantly, a dozen years younger, a Green Bone in her physical prime.